Arthur from Westchester County north of NYC, USA, at Arthur@NYCArthur.com · CC BY-SA 2.0

Sydney Pollack won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for Out of Africa in 1985, the high point of a run of studio films — The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie — that made him one of the defining Hollywood directors of the 1970s and '80s without ever attaching himself to a single genre. He was as comfortable in front of the camera as behind it, memorably playing Dustin Hoffman's exasperated agent in Tootsie and a small role in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.